This colloquium was organised with the expressed intention to "explore
and ascertain the necessary elements that will contribute to the design,
development and implementation of the National Electronic Library for Health
(NeLH) for the nursing professions.

The areas it was intended to address include;

Ensure a full understanding of the potential scope of the NeLH

The process for building the NeLH and links to existing services

Access to the NeLH

Ownership and Sponsorship

Some questions posed for participants in the Colloquium included:

Do the Nursing professions understand and agree with the way forward?

What are the mechanisms for securing user involvement in the design and
development stage and who needs to be involved?

Are nursing knowledge needs known and what supporting information is
available?

How useful is paper? - what are the problems of coping with present
resources of knowledge and how do nurses, midwives and health visitors keep up
to date?

What is known about physical access and the impact on education and
training?

The intention was to have a series of short presentations followed by
general discussion.

Welcome & Introduction
Muir Gray

Muir gave a humorous view of the arrival of the information society from an
industrial society & speculated where we are going next - perhaps to a
fundamentalist society? he drew an analogy between evidence based medicine
& alternative approaches with it's lack of evidence base but much greater
popularity. Will we end with a vitamin shop in every hospital foyer?

Information for Health
Marie Washbrook

Marie placed information for health in it's political context describing
supporting documents & organisations. She reinforced the importance of
nursing professions contribution, which was illustrated by the wide attendance,
showing a refreshing development from the early stages of NeLH development.

Knowledge management

The NeLH - Muir Gray

Muir described criticisms of the current access to information/guidelines
etc & raised some of the issues surrounding the informed patient. He
described the 4 floors analogy of the NeLH (now reduced to 3 as the patient
floor becomes part of NHS direct. He also touched on the early work on Virtual
Brach Libraries & Information Cafes for specific professional groups.

He highlighted the problems of peer review & knowledge selection that is
already exercised in publication and libraries as opposed to censorship.

He described how choices about patient care were based on evidence, but also
on the patient's values and condition and suggested that the NeLH needs to
strive for greater consideration of the later 2 in addition to the evidence.
Discussion centred around selection and updating of material & the role of
the NeLH as a provider/commisioner of information or providing an index of
pointers to information provided by others.

One delegate who argued for a freer & more open access policy walked out
suggesting that the decisions had already been made.

Further discussion about relationships with social services information and
other services highlighted some of the issues still to be addressed.

Existing Library resources - Veronica Fraser (Library
Advisor)

Veronica described current library provision across the NHS identifying
resourcing problems & the relationship with HE.
She set out barriers, drivers and opportunities to moving forward electronic
access within NHS libraries.

It highlighted the different cultural and technical considerations which may
be need for access outside NHS work - however it was generally accepted that
most nurses accessed from home rather than via NHS net.

NHS/DOH view & Nursing Web Site - Monica Duncan

Monica described how the technology can provide a vehicle for accessing
evidence for practice and CPD/PREP. She explored the immediacy of nurses
information needs and said it was not minute to minute or diverting them from
patient/client care. She explored joint decisions about reasonable use &
the utility/relvance of information but was worried about it slowing us down.
She used an acronym R.A.T.S. to describe what information should be;

Relevant

Accessible

Timely

Succinct

She outlined future developments for a nursing web site - but didn't promise
any particular dates

Skills for Information
Management

Informatics - Rod Ward

I outlined the IT & IM skills needed in my presentation which can be
downloaded
here
(warning large .ppt file)

Midwives Information and Resource Service (MIDIRS) has been running for 15
years with a database (70,000 refs) and digest service. It's a charitable
organisation and is resourced purely by the subscriptions of users. If their
information was to be incorporated into the NeLH this would create a serious
resourcing problem and the finical models for this sort of service need to be
addressed. The informed choice leaflets were used as an example that would be
ideal to circulate, but the financial implications (no income) would cripple
the organisation.

Professional Contributions to the NeLH - "what the
professional oragnisations do?"

CPHVA - Gill Adams

Gill described a survey of their members relating to what they want from
NeLH - key point being about fast and equitable access. The other issues were
set out by the knowledge floor (including professional facts), knowledge
management floor, and know how guidelines.

RCN - Kate Clark (Information Services librarian)

Kate described the RCNs focus groups on information services & the
current development of an RCN Information Strategy.

RCM - Ann Jackson-Baker (Director English Board)

Ann questioned the UK wide remit of NeLH, and described the RCMs proactive
approach including the delivery of study days for managers. The RCM web site
will soon be available.

Summary and the next steps

Muir summarised some of the issues from the day - and said that discussions
would continue

Evaluation forms were distributed inviting further contributions.

General comments

Interesting discussion which started to show the wide range of information
needs and potential contributions which could be made by the nursing
professions.

More discussion of the content would have been useful, but maybe this will
be the next step. Many of the issues will require both time and resources but
the potential is there for collaboration between members of the different
professions and groups and the NeLH project team.